A lipid membrane useful as a chemoreceptive transducer in an electrochemical cell is known, as illustrated by Thompson and Krull, Analytica Chimica Acta, 147: 1-21 (1983).
A supported lipid membrane is known, as exemplified by Thompson et al, Analytica Chimica Acta, 117: 133-145 (1980), Albrecht et al, Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, 687: 165-169 (1982), Kuhn, Thin Solid Films, 99: 1-16 (1983), and U.S. Pat. No. 4,490,216 to McConnell. Also Krull et al, Abstract 11-2, 67th Annual CIC Conference (June 1984) disclose the use of Langmuir-Blodgett thin-film deposition technology for providing substrate-stabilized, lipid membrane structures, and mention techniques for such deposition including schemes involving lipid-substrate anchorage.
The McConnell patent is directed to a supported, membrane-based device for measuring changes in the membrane surface charge. McConnell's device includes a solid layer that is conductive or semiconductive, and a lipid barrier that electrically insulates the solid layer from a polar layer (col. 13, lines 5-11). The lipid barrier is composed of a first hydrophobic layer that is non-diffusively bound to the solid layer and that is described as being relatively rigid, and a second hydrophobic layer that is bound to the first hydrophobic layer by hydrophobic interactions and that may respond to changes in its environment. Attached to the distal ends of the second hydrophobic layer are polar hydrophilic heads that define the polar layer. At column 12, formation of the first hydrophobic layer by reacting a silylating reagent with the solid layer is described.
There continues to be a need for an improved stabilized, lipid membrane-based device. In particular, there is a need for an ion-permeable device of this type that is useful as a chemo-receptive transducer in an electrochemical cell for the analysis of specific chemical test species. Thus, the discovery of such an improved lipid membrane-based device would constitute a significant contribution to the art. Furthermore, such a device would make possible an improved process for the analysis of specific chemical test species.